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Welcome to Varied Expressions of Worship

Welcome to Varied Expressions of Worship

This blog will be written from an orthodox Christian point of view. There may be some topic that is out of bounds, but at present I don't know what it will be. Politics is a part of life. Theology and philosophy are disciplines that we all participate in even if we don't think so. The Bible has a lot to say about economics. How about self defense? Is war ethical? Think of all the things that someone tells you we should not touch and let's give it a try. Everything that is a part of life should be an expression of worship.

Keep it courteous and be kind to those less blessed than you, but by all means don't worry about agreeing. We learn more when we get backed into a corner.

Monday, January 5, 2015

Opus 2015-6: Election 2016: Jeb on Education, part 3 of 3

We hear a lot of talk about standards. Everyone likes to have standards but what do they mean? In history we have gone to many meetings to write standards. The results? We took the old standards and listed them by priority. Instead of having a list of weekly expectations we divided the year up into quarters and had general material to cover. Smoke and Mirrors.

The priorities we already had. I have the standards listed as A, B, C and *. I have had that for years. The quarter approach is the one that we threw out fifteen years ago in the last attempt at “reform.” As far as rigor goes, you be the judge. I have my students write a 5-10 page term paper. I teach research techniques, note taking, outlining and the final product. I have them give an oral report. The new standards want me to have them do travel brochures. Which do you think is designed to challenge and which is designed to dumb down? So far I have been able to ignore the lower expectations.

States already have standards. We have scope and sequence. We have been doing it for years. When I started teaching I was handed an inch thick document that had everything I needed to know in order to teach the subject. They had them for every subject. The problem is not the written standards. The problem is the lack of applied standards. Educators talk about rigor and raising the bar. At an assembly early in the year our students were told that the official school board policy for middle school would be that a student could fail two out of their four core subjects in the last semester and still be eligible for promotion and all the activities. This is their idea of rigor.

Talk is cheap. I am a history teacher. I know that after the Civil War, freed slaves flocked to classrooms to learn and get ahead. It didn’t matter if the class met under a tree. They learned to read. They learned to write. They did it with lots of talk from the Federal government and no financial help. In the one room school house days children learned to read and write in small rooms with little equipment. They did it without long lists of standards and Project Based Learning. The problem is not that we don’t have standards, the problem is we keep making excuses and refusing to enforce those standards.

So in regard to education, Jeb Bush is on the liberal plantation. On other issues? Time will tell.

Have you noticed how hard it is to win the lottery if you don't by a ticket? Have you noticed how hard it is to win the lottery if you buy a ticket? Have you noticed how hard it is to read if you never read? Have you noticed how little you learn if you don't read?

Many times the problem is in the student, not the teacher or standard.